Pages

Monday, January 11, 2016

Back To School

Most of last week was spent getting back in our groove. That included family life, ministry, and school. I had enjoyed the lazy mornings and carefree days of Christmas break a little too much. The alarm clock going off last Monday morning was a harsh reminder that my break time was surely over.

We started the week with a lot of review from the first semester. In language we reviewed the letters and sounds and by the end of the week we were focusing on vowels. We also spend a lot of time each day learning and reviewing sight words. The highlight of the week was Cruz reading his first three reader books. Learning to read has excited him most about starting back to school. I am proud of the progress he is making and I can see he has already come a long way since the beginning of the school year. It makes me so proud to see him do something (like read) and know that I am teaching him to do it. It is a wonderful feeling!

playing an alphabet game

We try to play some type of phonics game every day.

We began reading with Set 1 of the Bob books. I had only intended for him to read the first one or two but he insisted on reading more. By the end of the week he had read three.

a short video of Cruz reading his first books

Our math lesson for the week was skip counting by 10's. I had already taught him that earlier in the year so we used it as review and added in other things he has learned.

Science was a fun week. We began a month long series entitled "Exploring the Earth". This week's topic was dirt. What little boy doesn't love dirt!

On Monday we went out and filled a jar with dirt. We used it the rest of the week in our lessons.

One day we mixed water with our dirt and shook it up. They enjoyed watching it all settle back down to the bottom. We used our magnifying glasses to get a closer look at it.

Cruz had to draw what he saw in his notebook.

In Bible we reviewed the Christmas story and then learned two new stories "The Flight into Egypt" (to hide from King Herod) and "The Boy Jesus" (when he got left in the temple in Jerusalem). We learned a few new songs- "I'll be a Sunbeam", "Obedience", and "Fishers of Men". Our memory verse for the week was Isaiah 45:22- Look unto Me, and be ye saved. Here is a video of Cruz saying his verse.

In our read aloud time we read The Boxcar Children book 1. My boys loved it and every night would ask me to read one more chapter. We finished it in four nights. We will begin another book in the series this week.

The only arts and crafts we did this week were decorations to put on our door. We won't have as many craft projects the second semester as we did the first semester.

Our school room door all decorated for January. I love decorating our door. It just adds a little cheer to our room.

some of our door decorations

I LOVE these footprint penguins!!!

Both of my boys love to color and make crafts so it's easy to get them to do things. I am sure it won't last forever so I am enjoying it while I can.

We had a good week and transitioned back into school fairly easily. I am breathing a little easier now that I am over the hump of the first semester. We still have a lot of teaching and learning to do but we both have more confidence now that we can finish strong.